


Penelope

by wheel_pen



Series: Darkwood Eastport [8]
Category: Lie to Me (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, F/M, Fish out of Water, Magic, Polygamy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-27
Updated: 2015-03-27
Packaged: 2018-03-19 21:28:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3624876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wheel_pen/pseuds/wheel_pen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cal tries a little psychological experiment with the younger children, which tests Ria more than the children. Then he and Gillian end up alone together and get flirty.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Penelope

**Author's Note:**

> The bad words are censored; that’s just how I do things. I own nothing and appreciate the chance to play in this universe. I’ve given a lot of thought to the Darkwood culture, so if something seems confusing, feel free to ask. I hope you enjoy!

“I want the blue!”

“Scoot over!”

“No shoving!”

“I’m using it!”

“Mommy! I need the blue!”

“Here’s another blue.”

“What’s _that_? It’s just scribbles!”

“It’s the lake!”

“Lakes are _blue_ , dummy!”

“No name-calling!”

“I need purple for my princess palace!”

“You’re supposed to draw something _real_! Daddy said!”

“Did not! He said draw something happy!”

“Caroline! Sit down and finish drawing, please. Lucia, draw on the paper, not the table. Charlotte! Crayons are not for eating.”

An empty chair at the table suddenly rattled. “Stop that,” Cal said in its direction, his voice soft. Nonetheless, he briefly drew the attention of several of the children crowded around the low table, who tended to be keenly aware of what their father did.

Yet immune to their mother’s instructions, it seemed, Ria sighed. “Alejo, leave your sister alone. Here’s the red. No, I’ll get that. Just turn the paper over and use it. Caroline, are you done? Then sit back down and finish, please.”

The empty chair, the one Cal had told the children not to sit in, wobbled again. “Stop it,” he hissed towards it, a bit more forceful this time. “I told you.” He went back to coloring his own drawing. “Sophia, could you hand me the—“ The chair suddenly tipped over, thumping on the carpeted floor. “Stop it!” Cal repeated, louder and more exasperated. He set the chair back upright. “You’ll have to leave if you can’t behave.”

“Who are you talking to, Daddy?”

“That’s Penelope,” Cal answered casually.

“Penelope?”

“Mm-hmm. She’s my friend,” he avowed.

“There’s no one there!”

“Sure there is,” Cal countered. “She knocked the chair over.”

“You did that!”

“Nah, it was Penelope.” The chair wiggled again. “Penelope, please sit still. You’re distracting us.”

“Who’s Penna-pee?”

“Penelope! She’s Daddy’s friend. She lives in a purple princess palace. Princess Penelope!”

“No, she doesn’t! She’s not real!”

“Penelope said she thinks you guys are cool,” Cal conveyed. “She thinks you’re super-cool.”

“Mommy, is Penelope _real_?”

Fortunately Ria was cut off before she had to answer. “You can play with _me_ , Penelope!”

“She’s not real! She’s just pretend!”

“No, she’s not!”

“Do you want to color, Penelope?”

“Here’s what Penelope drew,” Cal told them, holding up a piece of paper. “What do you think it is?”

“It’s a pony for Princess Penelope!”

“It’s a cloud.”

“It’s a boat.”

“It’s _blank_. There’s nothing there!”

Cal pinned the child who had said that with his intense green gaze, head tilted in that unnerving way he had. “Are you sure about that?” he asked quietly.

The moment stretched out awkwardly. “Okay! How about we go outside and play now?” Ria suggested brightly, and Cal’s eyes flickered over to her with interest at her discomfort.

Cheers met this suggestion. Except for, “What about Penelope?”

“She’s already gone,” Cal replied. “Can’t you see her out there, by the tree? Oh, you just missed her. She’s gone off to the swings.”

“I want to swing with Penelope!”

“She’s not real!”

“Go on, go outside,” Ria insisted, shuffling the children out the door. She rolled her eyes at Eli, who took the toddler in his arms and shepherded the older kids out to the playset, looking bemused. Then Ria turned back to face her husband, who still sat in the absurdly short chair, examining the children’s drawings.

“I’m sorry, my love,” Cal said unexpectedly, as Ria opened her mouth.

“Oh?” she replied, slightly confused.

“It was just a test, you know, for the children,” he continued, not looking up at her.

Ria took a few steps closer across the playroom floor. “Of course, well, it just seemed a little—“

“I didn’t mean to disparage you,” Cal interrupted, and Ria looked at him blankly. He cast his gaze towards the chair beside him. “Yes, you’re very well-behaved, Penelope. You’re the only woman who’s never lied to me!” Finally catching on, Ria rolled her eyes, and Cal looked up as though just noticing her. “Oh, still here? File these for me, love,” he told her, indicating the drawings scattered across the table. He stood stiffly from the low chair, stretching for a moment. “Would you like a snack, Penelope?” he asked an invisible figure beside him. “I would, too. Come on, then.” Cal proceeded towards the door without a second glance at his wife, though he did gesture for Penelope to exit first.

Ria sighed and shook her head, then began retrieving the children’s drawings. She jumped, however, when a voice started from behind her. “Interesting—oh, sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Gillian apologized, entering the room. “Interesting session?” She began switching the video cameras off for the younger woman.

“Were you watching?” Ria asked, nodding towards the two-way mirror into an observation room.

“Just the last bit.”

“He was doing that Penelope thing again,” Ria commented, disapproval clear in her tone. She started to label the children’s drawings with their names and the date. “Penelope, my imaginary friend who makes me do bad things…” She shook her head. “I don’t think the children know what to make of him sometimes.”

Gillian smiled and translated that remark to, ‘ _I_ don’t know what to make of him.’ “The ability to distinguish fantasy from reality is an important developmental milestone for children,” she reminded her wife gently. “He just wants to see who’s reached it and who hasn’t.”

“I know, I know,” Ria muttered. She felt slightly foolish, and thus annoyed at herself, as if she’d been caught getting scared by a children’s ghost story. “He just—goes overboard sometimes.”

Gillian couldn’t argue with that. Cal frequently went overboard when it came to his little psychological tests and experiments. Back in the Valley the Council had had to step in a few times when his games with unsuspecting people in public places had let to too many complaints. Sometimes, though, she wondered exactly _who_ he was testing—no matter what he actually _said_. Instead of commenting further, Gillian held up one of the pictures Ria hadn’t gotten to yet. “Laura?” she guessed. The purple palace drawing was crude, yet distinctive. Ria indicated yes and Gillian labeled it.

“Any idea why Robert’s ‘happy place’ is a yellow lake with a splotch of red?” Ria asked dryly, passing the drawing over to Gillian. “He _said_ it was a lake, anyway. It looks more like a taco.”

“I think it’s supposed to be a lake at sunset,” Gillian decided after a minute. “When the water reflects the sunlight? I guess he really liked going fishing last week.”

“All the boys got to get wet and muddy and run around and yell all they wanted,” Ria reminded her. “Of course they enjoyed it.”

Gillian picked up the next drawing in the stack and frowned at it. “Which child drew _this_?” she asked, flipping the detailed and rather disturbing cluster of imagery around to Ria.

The younger woman rolled her eyes when she saw it. “Cal.”

“Thank goodness.”

“Yes, drawing scary pictures like that is either a sign that someone is highly traumatized,” Ria began sarcastically, “or that someone is a psychologist who’s trying to mess with you.”

“Put it in the file,” Gillian judged. “If he ever really goes around the bend, we’ll use it as evidence against him.” The two women smirked at their running joke, which always managed to lessen the tension that sometimes built up around (or because of) Cal.

Ria finished the filing and headed outside to check on Eli and the children, while Gillian wandered off in search of Cal for his assessments. Ria would be reviewing the tapes and drawings for the next week before writing her report; and her judgments would probably be exactly the same as the ones Cal made after five seconds. But if anyone _else_ tried to rely on their snap judgments, Cal wouldn’t allow it, of course. There were many little rules about what _he_ could do but others couldn’t, not because he was head of the clan but because he simply didn’t trust the abilities of others the way he trusted his own. Gillian suspected he would be exactly the same if they were all somehow employees under him at a company. Although that didn’t really make it less frustrating, especially for Ria. Gillian was used to it by now, and Eli had his own way of doing things.

Gillian found Cal alone in the kitchen, sitting at the counter eating a peanut butter sandwich. Almost automatically he glanced around to be sure they were really alone, and Gillian smiled a bit and deliberately positioned herself on the opposite side of the counter. It was slightly ridiculous that after all these years—Emily was twenty, after all—and with two other spouses to occupy them, Cal and Gillian still, well, couldn’t keep their hands off each other. Being alone in the same room was something they tried to avoid, unless of course they planned to do just what they felt like doing. It was slightly annoying sometimes, actually, like when Gillian had something important to discuss with Cal and forgot all about it when he looked at her with his penetrating gaze. Sometimes she wondered if this was really normal behavior, and she suspected not; but in Darkwood people tended not to talk about such private things with non-family members, unless there was a real problem. And Gillian didn’t think it constituted _that_ , not by a long shot, especially not compared to the issues some of their clients had.

Still, when she just wanted to chat, it was best to be standing on the other side of a large barrier.

“So how did the assessment go?” she asked. She found herself leaning on the counter, closer to Cal.

He shrugged unencouragingly, his mouth full. Gillian was glad he hadn’t tried to speak anyway. As it was he folded his sandwich in half, disgustingly gaping and oozing, so he could still eat it while leaving one hand free to reach across the counter towards Gillian. It seemed like a bad idea, but she took it anyway. “I’m afraid our children are a mixed bag, intellectually,” he finally announced with resignation.

Gillian smiled tolerantly. “Sophia seemed quite certain on the difference between fantasy and reality,” she pointed out.

Good news was not interesting to Cal. “Laura’s lagging _way_ behind,” he decided harshly. “She didn’t even blink before she started believing in Penelope. She’s probably playing with her right now.”

“It doesn’t seem that serious to me,” Gillian demurred. “She was probably just going along with whatever you said, like it was a game.”

Cal was unplacated. “Favorites often fall behind in cognitive development,” he observed clinically. “She daydreams when she should be doing her schoolwork.”

“Which comes first, do you think?” Gillian speculated. “Slow cognitive development, or being a favorite?” Cal snorted in response. “Daydreaming at age six is not a big deal. Maybe her learning style is just different.”

“Well, the correlation’s not a problem,” he decided, as if trying to reassure her. “Her being a favorite will keep the slow genes out of the general population.” Since so-called favorites, an inexact translation of the Common Tongue word, usually didn’t marry or have children.

Gillian rolled her eyes at his true yet tactless remark. And he wondered how he alienated people sometimes. “I see Charlotte is still eating crayons,” she commented, moving on.

“And Caroline won’t sit still long enough to do anything,” he added, finishing his snack. “Lucia, Robert, and Alex all showed uncertainty about Penelope, though, so they seem to be on the right track.”

“That’s reassuring,” she responded dryly. “So our children aren’t _completely_ stupid, then?”

Their hands were fully entwined now and Cal tugged lightly, trying to get her closer. “Well, I never said _completely_ ,” he pointed out. “Your feet look tired. You should sit down.” He nodded towards the chair next to him, so Gillian instead turned and boosted herself onto the counter. She looked at him impishly over her shoulder and raised an eyebrow in challenge. “Put your feet up here,” Cal instructed and she did so, careful not to scratch the countertop with her pointed heels.

“Are you going to clean that up?” she asked him, indicating his plate, crumpled napkin, and the glob of peanut butter on the counter beside them. “I don’t want to get peanut butter on my clothes…”

Cal was not a particularly neat person. So instead of cleaning up after himself, he merely slid down a seat, turning Gillian’s feet so she faced him. “Come here.” A moment later they were arranged with one of Gillian’s feet on either side of Cal’s legs, his forearms resting fully on the counter along her thighs and his hands at her waist. “Now… what were we talking about?” he queried innocently, leveling his intense gaze at her.

“Penelope,” Gillian struggled to recall, looking down at him.

His fingertips kneaded right above her hips. “Oh yes. Penelope likes you, you know.”

“Does she?” Gillian replied dully, her breath fluttering.

“Mm-hmm. She’s thought of all kinds of bad things I can do to you,” Cal promised.

“Like what?” she inquired with anticipation.

“Well, she—“

“Mom! Where are you?” The teenage voice shouted from the upper balcony somewhere in the house. “I need help with grammar!”

Thwarted, Cal buried his head in Gillian’s lap, though not in the manner he really wanted to, and she rubbed the back of his head with a laugh. “Do it your bloody self!” he shouted back at Alice, as Gillian tried to shush him.

“Come on, help me down,” she insisted, trying to nudge him aside. “Don’t try to lift me!”

“D----t, woman, you’re a bloody twig,” he told her, helping her slide off the other side of the counter. “I’m not going to snap my spine just—“

She shushed him with a kiss that wasn’t as long as she would have liked. “I have to go conjugate,” she teased, turning away.

“If only,” Cal sighed. “Fine, then. I’m going into the clinic,” he called after her. The farther apart, the better, really. “Maybe a patient will wander in.”


End file.
